Bharat Ranganathan

What are “human rights” supposed to protect? According to most human rights doctrines, including most notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , human rights aim to protect “human dignity.” But what this concept amounts to and what its source is remain unclear. According to Glenn Hughes , human rights theorists ought to consider human dignity as an “intrinsically heuristic concept,” whose content is partially understood but is not fully determined. In this comment, I criticize Hughes's account. On my view, understanding inherent human dignity as an intrinsically heuristic concept tethers it to an “indeterminateness of sense,” which leaves it open to exploitation from theorists unsympathetic to the moral salience of rights and what rights are supposed to protect

Few people doubt that severe poverty is a pressing moral issue. But what sorts of obligations, if any, do affluent people have toward the severely poor? If one accepts the idea that one has some obligations to the severely poor there still remains disagreement about the magnitude of this obligation and when it obtains. I consider Peter Singer's influential "shallow pond" argument, which holds that affluent people have greater obligations toward the severely poor than ordinary moral judgments suggest. Critics hold that Singer's view is excessively demanding and therefore untenable. I thus turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan and Christian accounts of neighbor-love to help attenuate this criticism. Drawing from Christian conversations on neighbor-love, I attempt to demonstrate that accepting an obligation to assist does not necessarily result in one abandoning one's special relations, abnegating self-regard, or no longer pursuing other non-moral strivings

Representing a spectrum of intellectual concerns and methodological commitments in religious ethics, the contributors to this focus issue consider and assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift in recent comparative religious ethics away from a rootedness in moral theory toward a model that privileges the ethnography of moral worlds. In their own way, all of the contributors think through and emphasize the meaning, importance, and place of normativity in recent comparative religious ethics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Egalitarian Liberalism Revisited: On the Meaning and Justification of Social Justice by Per SundmanBharat RanganathanEgalitarian Liberalism Revisited: On the Meaning and Justification of Social Justice Per Sundman uppsala, sweden: uppsala universitet, 2016. 242 pp. $72.50Across a range of contemporary disciplines, discussions about justice abound. Despite the prevalence of these discussions, however, there is little consensus about what justice is and whether (and, if so, how) appeals to it should be made. Moreover, if the interconnectedness and pluralism that obtain in our rapidly globalizing world are taken seriously, concerns about the content, meaning, and use of justice are amplified. Against this backdrop, Per Sundman aims to explicate and evaluate one particular form of justice: egalitarian liberalism. On his definition, egalitarian liberalism is "best understood as a triune conjunction of equality of opportunity, desert and self-ownership" (10). Over the course of eight substantive chapters, Sundman labors to show how these criteria both reinforce and don't contradict each other, aiming to clarify the meaning of social justice while considering known alternatives.To develop this argument, Sundman covers a truly impressive range of topics in contemporary debates about justice, including consequentialism and deontology, equality of opportunity and equality of resources, capabilities and rights, corrective and distributive policies, the natural and social lotteries, status in moral and political communities, and the politics of recognition and misrecognition. On the whole, covering such a range of topics proves to be a strength. Sundman introduces the reader to a number of important topics and how several important thinkers have treated those topics, and his discussion of these topics and thinkers is evenhanded and insightful. If you're familiar with (and interested in) one or more of these debates, you will be delighted to find a theological ethicist engaging in them. There's also a further reason for delight: Sundman enters and engages in these debates without bringing the all-too-frequent (and oftentimes empty) charge that liberalism is "impoverished"—a point to which I'll return. But depending on your level of familiarity with recent debates in moral and political philosophy, you may be left unsatisfied with some aspects of Sundman's discussion. Specifically, some of these topics and thinkers deserve further attention and scrutiny than Sundman provides, especially important given Sundman's stated desire to navigate alternative understandings. [End Page 189]I do want to draw the reader's attention to the penultimate chapter of Sundman's book, "Save Us from Liberalism." But first I want to make a larger point. I mentioned what I think is an all-too-frequent charge made in theological ethics: namely, that liberalism is impoverished. Sometimes, this charge is entirely warranted. But oftentimes, at least in my experience, it is empty: the person bringing the charge neither distinguishes among the diversity that obtains within liberalism nor charitably reads and represents the thinker with whom they are trying to engage. Given this disciplinary shortcoming, Sundman is to be commended for turning to Christian critiques of liberalism only after he's carefully worked (and guided the reader) through the myriad topics and thinkers that constitute egalitarian liberalism writ large.So what about this chapter in particular? Focusing on Christian communitarians—for example, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank—Sundman explores whether authentic Christian ethics contradicts and is superior to egalitarian liberalism. In the first half of the chapter, he examines the different ways in which Christian communitarians understand obedience to God's commands and have criticized the putative liberal obsession with "autonomy." Following an important discussion where he contrasts Christian and liberal understandings of the circumstances of justice, the second half of Sundman's chapter argues briefly but persuasively against Christian exclusivity (e.g., the recently popular Benedict Option) and for Christians to act out of love, for justice, and in the world.There is much to recommend about this book. Both substantively and structurally, it is admirable and instructive.Bharat RanganathanUniversity of Notre DameCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics...

In The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying, Jeffrey Bishop argues that contemporary medicine has (among other things) reduced the patient from a ‘subject’ to an ‘object’. He extends this charge to all corners of contemporary medicine. But in his book’s concluding chapter, ‘Anticipating Life’, he turns toward a constructive proposal, asking, in closing, ‘[m]ight it not be that only theology can save medicine?’ Toward answering Bishop’s query, I turn to the thought of Paul Ramsey. Ramsey is helpful because, in thinking through and responding to contemporary moral dilemmas, he begins with his theological commitments and thereby may avoid the reductive tendencies that Bishop argues affect contemporary medicine. Specifically, Ramsey’s account of the ‘patient as person’, I will argue, delimits what the medical endeavor may do and might offer resources to help save medicine.

What methodologies should characterize religious ethics? How should religious ethics relate (or not relate) to religious studies? These questions have long confronted religious ethicists. But in the last decade, debates about what is and isn’t religious ethics have expanded and intensified, including not only disciplinary relationships and methodological commitments but also what the meaning and goals of religious ethics ought to be. In this chapter, I first briefly rehearse recent debates concerning whether and how religious ethics ought to be practiced. Second, I offer my own constructive proposal. Drawing from Richard B. Miller and David Hollenbach, my proposal argues that religious ethicists should use normative methodologies and by informed by a sense of intellectual solidarity. Given that we live in increasingly diverse and interconnected communities and are confronted by ever more pressing moral and political issues, however, demands that we move further to employ methodologies that are normative and solidaristic.

How should we understand the relationship between Christian ethics and religious ethics? Among comparative, ethnographic, and normative methodologies? Between confessional and non-confessional orientations, or between theology and philosophy? This volume brings together emerging religious ethicists to engage the normative dimensions of Christian ethics. Focusing on scripture, tradition, and reason, the contributors to this volume argue for a vision of Christian ethics as religious ethics. Toward this end, they engage with scripture, interpretation, and religious practice; examine the putative divide between reason and tradition, autonomy and heteronomy; and offer proposals about the normative characterization of conceptual and practical issues in contemporary religious ethics. Collectively, the volume engages Christian thought to make an argument for the continuing relevance of normative methodologies in contemporary religious and theological ethics.

This volume brings together emerging and established religious ethicists to investigate how those in the field carry forward the practice and tradition of social criticism and, at the same time, how social criticism informs the scholarly values of their field. Contributors reflect on the nature of the moral subject and the ethical weight of human dignity and consider the limits and possibilities of religious humanism in orienting the work of social criticism. They compare religious sources and forms of research in religious ethics to secular sources and the tradition of liberal social criticism. And they offer proposals for how religious ethics can help humanists navigate our complex and multicultural moral landscape and what this field reveals about the ultimate ends of humanistic scholarship.

The contributors to this volume are motivated by two concerns. First, we want to clarify the relationship between religious ethics and Christian ethics. Second, we want to specify the contributions that Christian ethics makes to religious ethics. Apart from this Introduction, however, our respective contributions are not methodological essays. Some of us directly address these concerns. For others, these concerns are part of the intellectual landscape that informs our implicit background assumptions. But for all of us, our primary aim is to show, rather than say, what normative Christian ethics is and why it matters for contemporary religious ethics.

Paul Ramsey’s ethics certainly is Christian. But it is also more pointedly a Christian deontological ethics. For example, Ramsey claims, “[c]ertainly Christian ethics is a deontological ethic, not an ‘ethic of the good.’” In the context of his early writings, however, Ramsey’s characterization of the deontological bent of Christian ethics is frustratingly murky. Specifically, the analytic distinctions he makes are not sufficiently stark. In order to understand why Ramsey holds that Christian ethics ought to be construed as deontological, I will proceed as follows. I will first reconstruct Ramsey’s arguments from Basic Christian Ethics to appreciate his foundational claims about the Christian moral life. I will then turn to his later writings, focusing especially on those about medical ethics, that lend clarity to his earlier work. These later arguments, I will argue, help us better appreciate Ramsey’s earlier claims in favor of Christian deontology.

In her book, Politics of Piety, Saba Mahmood (1) challenges liberal views about agency, and (2) offers her own account of agency. This article argues that Mahmood’s characterization of liberal agency is a caricature. Contrary to her view, liberalism isn’t merely procedural but rather espouses stringent commitments toward protecting people’s basic rights and liberties. This article then argues that her account of agency may entail practices decried by liberal and some feminist theorists. Specifically, practices that override one’s status in moral and political communities cannot be defended on the grounds that they are necessary for particular forms of human flourishing.

In an effort to understand how religious ethicists carry the practice and tradition of social criticism forward, the contributors to this volume investigate the unique religious resources that religious ethicists draw upon to evaluate social practices and the methods of humanistic scholarship that encourage dialectical exchange about matters of religion and ethics in our multicultural politics. While we draw from diverse intellectual, methodological, and religious commitments, we all have academic and personal connections to Richard B. Miller, with the diversity of our perspectives and projects reflecting the breadth of his own interests. Individually and collectively, our chapters give textual shape to the robust interdisciplinary conversations that Miller’s research and teaching have inspired over the course of his career, especially those pertaining to the content of and justification for humanistic scholarship. Throughout this volume, we aim to offer guidelines for and advances within the study of religion through social criticism.